Clinton is hospitalized with blood clot following accident

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been hospitalized after suffering a blood clot following an accident last month, her senior State Department aide, Philippe Reines, said Sunday.

Clinton fell ill with a stomach bug that led to her fainting and suffering a concussion, but her office had insisted she was recovering and the top U.S. diplomat was expected back at her desk Monday. “In the course of a followup exam today, Secretary Clinton’s doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago,” Reines said in a statement.

“She is being treated with anticoagulants and is at New York Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours,” he said, referring to a major hospital in Clinton’s home state. “Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required.”

Reines did not elaborate on the condition of Clinton, 65. It was not clear in which part of her body the clot had been found nor if it was life-threatening.

In 1998, when she was first lady in the White House of her husband and then-President Bill Clinton, she suffered a blood clot in her leg that she has described as “the most significant health scare I’ve ever had.”

“That was scary because you have to treat it immediately — you don’t want to take the risk that it will break lose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs,” she told the New York Daily News in October 2007.

Clinton has been off work since her return from her last foreign trip on Dec. 7, although her staff has said she has been working from home.

Earlier in December, the State Department said Clinton had contracted a bad stomach virus during her five-day stay in Europe. Due to the illness, she had to cancel a planned trip to North Africa and Abu Dhabi.

A week later, Clinton’s doctors said she had become severely dehydrated because of the effects of the stomach bug and had fainted, suffering a concussion.

They recommended she rest at home and avoid, through mid-January, the high-intensity travel she had been accustomed to taking as secretary of state.